In the Russia of the tsars, people who criticized or questioned the autocratic prerogatives of the sovereign were brutally suppressed and sometimes actively persecuted. So imbedded was this official hostility to anyone hoping to change or even influence government policy, that even the most high-minded reformers came to understand that the only way they could succeed was to overthrow the regime. The author describes the activities of the most important dissidents and agitators from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution in 1917. Many of these fascinating individuals were serious activists endeavoring to improve society; others were opportunistic scoundrels and adventurers. The author explores the causes that provoked them and the consequences they faced, and explains how time and time again the tsars were goaded into mistakes and over-reaction.

The late Peter Julicher taught history at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for thirty-two years. He was a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Middlebury College in Vermont and the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. He was affiliated with Greenhills School and lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Peter Julicher

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 318
Bibliographic Info: photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2003
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1612-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      v
A Note About Russian Names, Words and Dates      ix
Introduction      1

1. Renegade Prince      7
2. The Great Pretender      23
3. Boyars, Cossacks, and More Pretenders      38
4. Mobs, Mutinies, and the Church Schism      57
5. Cossack Rebels and Renegades      76
6. Rebel Relatives and the Revolts of the Strel’tsy      106
7. Scheming Aristocrats—Palace Coups      132
8. Aristocratic Rebels: The Decembrists and Petrashevtsy      155
9. Nihilists, Nechaev, and the People’s Will      182
10. Reaction, Rasputin, and Revolution      220

Epilogue      255
Notes      261
Bibliography      283
Index      293

• “Recommended”—Catholic Library World
• “Julicher writes in an easy, non-academic style and succeeds in tying hundreds of years of Russian history together with the unlikely thread of dissident behavior”—Russian Life